Mascots and Their Discontents: Notes on Indigenous People’s Day

Have you seen this criminal?

Happy Indigenous People’s Day! It coincides with the holiday “Columbus Day” where the federal government is shut down for a day. And since the Republican Party is holding the government hostage to deny health coverage for millions of Americans everyday, that makes today pretty much just your average Monday.

Native American mascots are not cool, and the Washington football team needs to change its name. It’s racist plain and simple. It just needs to happen, but of course if sports team owners did the right thing every time, then the Warriors would stay in Oakland and drop the ridiculous “Golden State” (where is that?) moniker, Clippers owner Donald T. Sterling would turn his apartment buildings into affordable housing, and Miami wouldn’t have been robbed by the Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria.

As an organization, Red Cloud Indian School has never—and will never—endorse the use of the name “R********.” Like many Native American organizations across the country, members of our staff and extended community find the name offensive.

Hitting a campaign target is about finding the right levers to get that boss or a decision-maker to do something they don’t want to do or deploy resources they wouldn’t otherwise. Given all this motion, it’s clear that Snyder’s hand was forced by his own bumbling responses to critics, his overall lack of defenders outside of the idiotic internet-troll types, and the mobilization on various fronts by opponents of the Washington racist mascot. I’m sure he’s not just ready to write open letters on a whim, but that he did shows that something is working.

AND the ship too!

So on this Indigenous People’s Day 2013, I leave you with a funny video to reinforce the important message of “screw Columbus and the ship he came in on” and offer some Asian-Indian solidarity (or is that Asian Indian solidarity? Hah!).

Why not Joe DiMaggio Day instead? He was a hall of fame baseball player with a record 56 game hitting streak, look at his stats: career .325 batting average, seven straight seasons of over a hundred RBI, and most importantly, zero career genocides.